


Practice Makes Perfect

by imaginary_iby



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:09:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_iby/pseuds/imaginary_iby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the real world, life isn't always perfect. Sex isn't always phenomenal. Attraction isn't always what you were expecting.  This story expands on the idea that neither Steve nor Danny has any prior experience when it comes to being attracted to, dating, and sleeping with, another man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practice Makes Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> I think that Steve and Danny are head over heels for each other, not to mention sexually attracted to each other. At the same time, though, I believe that before they met each other, they were both totally straight - this fic is an exploration of their... adventures.
> 
> Also: please tell me I'm not the only one who finds the mechanics of writing slash, particularly sex, mentally taxing? All those male pronouns! I'm like, _WHO IS HE? WHOOOO IS HEEEEE? You might know who you're talking about, self, but the readers don't!_

“Come on, come on, come on,” Steve whispered encouragingly at his reflection, raking a hand through his hair. “You can do this. Hell, you _want_ to do this. You certainly wanted to do this yesterday.” Yesterday. When Danny had been licking chocolate from his fingers like it was the last few drops on earth, and Steve, achingly hard and trapped behind his desk, had prayed that an emergency call wouldn’t come in. 

Now, stood before his bathroom mirror, Steve contemplated brushing his teeth. Again. With a huff of disgust, he sat down on the edge of the tub and kicked off his boots.

It had been a long time since he’d felt nervous about… well, about anything, really. He wasn’t particularly prone to nerves. Fiery rage, sure, and he'd thought he was going to pass out from high blood pressure when Gracie had been taken. But even then, he hadn't been nervous, just consumed with purpose and anger.

More to the point, however, was that it had been a long time since he'd felt nervous about anything bedroom related. Sure, he didn't think he was some kind of sex-wizard, god's gift to women and all that nonsense, but enough dates over the years had informed him that he was... aesthetically pleasing. The nature of his job had long ago washed away any socially instinctive hesitation regarding being naked around other people, and, really, he was long past his years as a curious blushing virgin.

At 35 years of age, he hadn't really been expecting a sexual revolution. He liked women. He liked sex with women. He liked creamy thighs wrapped around his hips and the soft swell of breasts pressed against his chest.

He was fairly certain Danny did not have creamy thighs.

It had taken him a few weeks to come to grips with the fact that he was thinking about Danny's thighs at all. He didn't consider it so much a Big Gay Freak-Out, as rather a Big Danny Freak-Out. Hawaii had enough topless men wandering around that he had quickly ascertained that it was only one mouthy Jersey cop in particular that floated his sexual boat.

There was, however, a difference between mentally coming to grips with a notion, and actively pursuing a reality. He knew enough about how he was feeling and acting, to see the exact same thought processes playing out in Danny's expressions. 

The confirmation of mutual attraction only helped to ease about a fifth of his anxiety, and if the slightly jittery way Danny had been acting recently was any indication, Danny was just as lacking in reassurance. 

He wanted to kiss Danny. The flurry of heat that bloomed deep in his belly whenever his partner walked in the room certainly wanted him to kiss Danny. His hands wanted him to kiss Danny, if the way they kept making aborted movements towards blonde stubble was any indication.

It wasn't that he was unsettled by the desire. It was just that he didn't know how to go about following through on it. Oh sure, the mechanics of a kiss were simple enough, but this was new and strange and too important to mess with.

Then there was the prospect of sex. Sex with a man. Not just any man, sex with _Danny._ At the thought, the build-up of nervous energy in his chest reached critical mass, and he jumped up and began to bounce from one foot to the other. He averted his gaze from the mirror, not quite able to look himself in the eye, already too aware of the heat he could feel in his cheeks.

He genuinely wasn't sure how he felt about the idea. On the one hand, the mental image of Danny spread out under him had been waking him up almost nightly, to the point where he'd given up on wearing anything to bed at all. On the other hand, the thought of being inside Danny, well... it thoroughly weirded him out. And the thought of _Danny_ being inside _him_ left him a little light-headed, and not necessarily in a good way.

It wasn't disgust, he knew that much. He'd been proud to keep the secrets of a few of the men that he'd served with. He'd just never really been right there, alongside them.

The clink of the oven snapping shut downstairs pulled him from his thoughts. Right. Lurking creepily in the bathroom for a suspiciously long time, whilst his partner pottered around in the kitchen, wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

\-------

If Danny was going to be perfectly honest, he’d mentally breathed a sigh of relief when Steve had announced that he was going upstairs. He didn’t particularly relish the prospect of assembling dinner whilst half-hard and fully flustered, and he'd hoped that a few moments of privacy would let him come to grips with everything. Figuratively speaking, of course.

And so it was with a glare that he inspected the oven, which had snapped shut with a traitorous clank and brought forth the tread of feet down the stairs.

Steeling himself, and clamping down on the slightly annoying habit his body had of being delighted when presented with more Steve, Danny turned around, fully prepared to assign dish cleaning duty. But the sight of his partner in dark blue jeans and a sinfully scrunched button down shirt, rolled to the elbows, knocked the words right out of his mouth.

In a rare moment of open acceptance of this thing between them that they didn't understand, didn't know how to deal with, and didn't have a name for, Steve looked momentarily guilty and asked, "should I go change?"

"No." Danny closed his eyes against the speed with which he'd groaned a reply. He was a divorced Jersey cop with a daughter, for crying out loud. "No. You clean up nice, babe."

Blinking his eyes open, Danny saw the red tint painting Steve's cheeks grow, and genuinely felt sorry for him. 

\-------

Steve would have liked to have said that finally kissing Danny was the result of a concerted effort to cobble together his last remaining nuggets of bravery. He would have liked to have said that it transpired because of a finely honed Smooth-Dog skill-set. The fact that it was the confluence of a series of awkward accidents was not something that he relished sharing with the world.

It had started innocently enough. Danny had asked him to come over and check the pasta, and as he'd stepped forward to peer over Danny's shoulder, Danny had stepped back to retrieve something from another bench. Cue, Steve's cock pressed snug against the small of Danny's back. Through several layers of clothing, certainly, but that didn't seem to dampen his body's instant reaction.

After a few seconds of standing stock still, the both of them torn between obvious enjoyment and acute embarrassment, they both sprang into action. Which somehow only ended up with them pressed even closer together, but this time face to face. Steve wasn't going to lie and say that he didn't enjoy the feel of Danny flush against him, didn't relish the not-so-gentle nudge of something pressing against his thigh with ever growing insistence. What with the way his cock was prodding at the stretch of skin beneath Danny's belly, he figured it would only be hypocritical to judge.

With his mouth hovering somewhere around Danny's temple, the newly developed instincts that he'd been trying to understand over the last few weeks kicked in, and he leaned down a little, to press his lips to Danny's jaw. 

He didn't really consider it a cop-out, because it was undeniably sexual. It wasn't like he could turn around and say, _oh, you misinterpreted my hot open mouth on your stubbled jaw, you idiot!_ It was a move, fair and square.

To his unending relief, Danny tilted his head, letting Steve press another kiss to skin, this time at the sensitive curve of Danny's jaw, beneath his ear. He wasn't quite sure where to go next, so he focused instead on the peculiar feel of Danny's stubble hissing and scratching against his own. That was new. And... odd. And... _ow._

Danny seemed to be of a similar opinion, if the way he had pulled back and was inspecting Steve's cheek with an air of accusation, was any indication. "Right. So. Shaving is obviously key."

"Yup," Steve concurred, before leaning in again to press his nose to Danny's.

Then there was the issue of hands. The both of them, it turned out, had rather similar habits. They both kept trying to cup each others cheeks, or curl fingers around each others necks, to the point where they became little more than an oddly tangled mess of hands.

"We'll work on that," Danny whispered, and it was all Steve could do not to chuckle into his mouth.

Work on it, they did. It wasn't long before the twining of limbs was working decidedly in their favour. They learned quickly to anticipate each others physical tells, and in next to no time Danny had his fingertips pressed to the small of Steve's back.

It wasn't until they both tried, simultaneously, to nudge each other up onto a kitchen bench that they stopped, pulled back, and truly inspected each other closely. 

"Not a woman, Daniel," Steve mumbled around a self-assessing lick of his lips - they felt a little sensitive.

Danny demonstratively snapped his hips forward against Steve's thigh in reply. "Neither am I, Steven."

And all the awkwardness poured back in.

\-------

It turned out... okay, in the end.

Half satisfied, half surprised and last but not least, fully naked, Steve stared at the ceiling contemplatively. He supposed that the chances of his first time with Danny being a ~sexual revelation~ and all that jazz, had always been pretty slim.

He'd enjoyed it. The pink elephant in the room, otherwise known as the sticky cream streaks that currently adorned the crease of Danny's left hip, was proof enough of that.

And hadn't _that_ been an experience. For the first time since an embarrassingly brief encounter with Kelly Fletcher in the back of his car at the tender age of seventeen, Steve had wanted to apologise half way through. It had only been Danny's expression, a curious mixture of surprise, bafflement and fiery heat that had stopped him from opening his mouth and driven him on to keep clumsily palming and pumping Danny's cock.

It wasn't that Steve was unfamiliar with hand-jobs. He'd dated women, and hey, he had hands. But the angle was different, the body was different, the cock was different, and he'd never really contemplated what another man might enjoy, or indeed, how to give enjoyment to another man. Even if that other man was Danny, who was almost his second self in life.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Steve rolled over to take in his partner. He felt the brush of a wet patch of material against the skin of his hip and wiggled awkwardly away from it - reassuring proof, at least, that Danny had enjoyed himself, too. He flicked his eyes up just in time to see Danny dispose of a tissue.

"So," he began, before faltering.

Danny nodded. "Indeed."

"Well. That was... well. Huh."

An uncharacteristically indulgent smile broke out on Danny's face. "Yup." He popped the _p_ with enthusiasm.

"Look," they began simultaneously, before both breaking off. 

There was a moment of silence, and then Danny pressed a hand to Steve's chest. "Surprise surprise, I'm going to talk. Look. See. I think... we could lie. I could tell you that was the best sex of my life. You could tell me I was a god amongst men. But you know what? Twenty years from now, you'd still be doing that weird wrist-flick thing, and then where would we be? Stuck with bad sex, that's where."

Steve frowned indignantly, shifting to rest his cheek on his arm. "Weird wrist-flick thing? Well, what about you? What was that strange finger-swirling thing, eh? Eh? Is that supposed to be a turn-on?"

Danny grinned. "See, this is good, this is good! No more finger-swirling, no more wrist-flicking, it's a deal. See, we're learning."

The room fell to silence, as they both took stock of the night's events. Steve had almost settled into a doze, enjoying, to his surprise, the press of a masculine and hairy leg against his own, when he sprang back to wakefulness. "Twenty years from now?"

Danny didn't deign to respond, merely smacked a hand to Steve's belly as if to say, _you are an idiot, but you are my idiot, now shut up and go to sleep._

\------

Steve awoke with a gasped _oh_. Between his dream and the hand that was wrapped around his cock, he was a little surprised, (and ridiculously relieved), that it wasn't a _big_ one. He lay on his side, mere inches from Danny, who was looking down curiously into the small space between their bodies. 

Steve watched Danny mumble something, as Danny watched his fingers move on Steve's heated skin. A small part of Steve's brain was delighted that Danny wasn't doing that odd swirling thing again, but most of his thought power was being expended on trying to fulfill Danny's request for...for...he couldn't remember.

"What?" he groaned. 

"Give me your hand."

Steve did as instructed, and nearly came apart when he realized what Danny was planning.

Danny slid Steve's hand down, between their bodies. "Curl your fingers between mine," he whispered, flexing his thumb to adjust his hold on Steve's cock. 

Steve did so.

"Now, guide my hand. Show me what you want. Show me how you like it."

Steve didn't think he was going to be able to last anywhere near that long. There was something about watching Danny's fingers twined with his own that made his skin feel like it was on fire. Danny's hand was large, but smaller than his own; wide where Steve's was long.

It wasn't just their hands in contrast. Danny's cock was thicker, where Steve's was longer, and to Steve's surprise he found that he was incredibly turned on by it. The burn of arousal helped to lessen the earlier nerves he'd felt, and he found himself surprisingly open to trying new things.

Still. One step at a time.

With his forehead pressed against Danny's, their gazes flickered down, he slowly began to pump and squeeze and stroke, Danny's fingers pliant beneath his, following his every move. 

Steve couldn't help but clench his eyes shut when Danny began to take control, his fingers moving with a skill and familiarity that he hadn't possessed earlier in the night. It didn't take long for Steve to spill all over their hands, his belly-deep gasps swallowed by a kiss. For a brief second, Steve thrilled at the possibility that Danny might raise his fingers to his lips, but he wasn't disappointed when Danny merely wiped his hand on the sheets. Steve couldn't honestly say that he wouldn't have done the same.

They repeated the process, with Danny's hand pressed over Steve's, although Steve momentarily rebelled with a deliberate wrist-flick that earned him a stern and exasperated _Steven._ Danny seemed immensely turned on by the fact that Steve's fingers were sticky, and it wasn't long until he came, too, with a groan. 

\--------

Life, of course, rolled on. The world didn't stop just because two task force detectives had finally fallen into bed with each other. Crime didn't dry up because said detectives were busy dealing with the fact that for the first time in either of their lives, they were seeing and sleeping with another man.

There really wasn't much time for anything beyond the usual; endless arguments in the car, limitless aggravation with each other, and their characteristic disrespect for personal space. But if one looked closely enough, which Chin and Kono were paid to do, there were small changes that had entered into their hectic lives.

Where once Danny would rest his hand on the crook of Steve's arm, now he tended to let it linger on the small of Steve's back. Where once they would stand closely side by side, Steve had developed a habit of peering over Danny's shoulder, even if there was nothing in particular to peer at. There was also Steve's almost ritualistic quick kiss over the gear-stick, before they took off in the morning, but nobody else was there to see that. 

\------

Having a man come in his mouth was not something that Steve had ever really anticipated. He couldn't say it wasn't his own fault, though. Danny had certainly given him a lot of warning, and it wasn't like his tongue on Danny's cock had been innocent. 

But now, as he looked up, he knew his expression plainly said, _well, what the fuck, that was new._

Danny, ever the gentleman, offered him a tissue, but Steve held up a finger. He raised an eyebrow in quiet contemplation, before visibly swallowing. Danny's cock, which had been slowly deflating against Steve's chin, twitched with interest. Neither of them were teenagers, though, so Steve merely smirked. He swiped his tongue to the sides of his mouth, before swallowing again.

"I swear," Danny groaned. "You are such a tease, McGarrett." Danny leaned over for a kiss. There was a quick flick of his tongue, before said tongue froze and hastily withdrew. "Huh." Danny said, with wide eyes. He chewed on his bottom lip, as if contemplating the wonders of the universe. "Didn't think about that."

Steve just about died when Danny leaned back down for more.

\-------

Sat on the edge of the bed, Steve suspiciously eyed the bottle of lube resting innocently on the side table. "So, we're really doing this?"

A mumbled, "wha?" from behind the partially closed ensuite door was his only reply. 

Steve wondered how he'd reached the point in his life where he knew just by Danny's slurred voice that he was flossing his teeth, but at the same time still felt oddly uncomfortable about the prospect of sliding home inside said dental fanatic.

He knew, realistically, that it was just a learning curve. A few months prior, the mere thought of kissing Danny had left him feeling awkward; now he spent almost all of his free-time doing so. Danny's hands on his body had grown to feel like second nature, and Steve had become intimately acquainted with the slight curve of Danny's cock.

Nevertheless, Danny seemed more comfortable with the idea of... well, Steve's old high school biology teacher's voice sounded in his mind: _when engaging in penetrative sex, one must always remember to..._ He shook his head - thinking about Mrs. Hendrichsen wasn't going to help. The point was, between the two of them, Danny seemed a little less freaked out. And so it was decided that Danny would be the one getting fucked, as he'd so delicately announced over dinner one night.

He'd been taking increasingly long showers over the last week, with the door locked, and he'd merely told a curious Steve that he was protecting him from information he wasn't quite sure Steve was ready for. Steve was pretty sure he believed him.

It all balanced out, he supposed. Whilst Danny was perfectly happy to receive an early morning blow-job, he was still a bit weirded out by the prospect of Steve's cock in his mouth. _Different strokes,_ he'd mumbled around a sheepish grin one morning.

"Babe."

At this, Steve looked up from the lube, to take in the sight of Danny propped against the door-frame, arms and ankles crossed. He was wearing dark blue boxer briefs, which were actually Steve's, and he looked thoroughly delicious. 

"Please stop looking like you're about to take a trip to the dentist," he said, as he stalked forward to nudge his way between Steve's thighs. "We don't actually have to do this, you know."

The thing was. Well. The thing was, Steve was pretty sure he wanted to. He was pretty sure he was going to enjoy the end result; it was just the getting there that was unsettling. 

"You're overdressed," Danny tutted. "That's not like you."

Steve rolled his eyes. "You're hilar-oh." He was cut off by Danny's nimble fingers on his zip. He bucked up off the mattress, and Danny may or may not have grumbled something about not being at the rodeo, _for crying out loud._

An enthusiastic shedding of clothes ensued, and it wasn't long before Steve was spread over Danny like a blanket, his cock sliding and rubbing against the skin of Danny's belly with growing insistence. He knew things weren't going to go to plan if he kept that up, though, so he reached down to grab Danny's thigh, hoping to still them both and collect their calm. 

It was only then that he realized that one of Danny's hands was stretched far down between their bodies, the slightly awkward twists of his wrist and the strange movements of his fingers drawing Steve's attention.

It took him a few seconds to realize what Danny was doing. A flood of feeling washed over him. Sheer relief that he hadn't had to, embarrassment that he hadn't actually thought to, and the most intense rush of arousal. He gripped the sheets beside Danny's head tightly; the foil crinkle of the discarded condom packet buried under his palm. It was all he could do not to let his elbows give way, but he suspected Danny wouldn't appreciate 200 pounds of SEAL squashing him into the mattress.

"God," he gasped, dropping his forehead to Danny's chin. He felt a huff of laughter against his hair, and in retaliation deposited a glob of rather cold lube directly onto Danny's sensitive, hot skin.

He would never dare admit it out loud, but he rather enjoyed Danny's indignant yelp.

It was this sudden burst of amusement that let him shed the last remnants of fear, and before he knew what he was doing, he had lined their bodies up. The head of his cock nudged instinctively against Danny's slick skin, and slowly, slowly, he began to slip inside. 

After a few seconds, Danny's fingernails began to dig painfully into the space between his shoulder blades, and he stopped. 

"Yeah, yeah, hang on," Danny mumbled, his face a mixture of pleasure and pain. "Gimme...god, gimme a sec."

A bloom of apprehension began to unfurl in Steve's chest, and he would have pulled out if not for Danny's hands suddenly flying down his body to hold him close, one hand digging into the rounded flesh of Steve's arse, the other pressed flat against the small of his back. 

"No, no, stay." Danny bit his lip, before nodding. "Okay, okay, more."

Steve pushed in further, so slowly that he thought his arms were going to give way, but Danny's hands on his back remained relatively unclenched and calm. He tried to keep still as Danny's hips shifted, tried to let him find a comfortable position. After a while he felt Danny let out a deep exhalation, and he looked up to see Danny's face finally relax into an mischievous grin.

Steve glowered mock menacingly. "If you say something like, _take me, sailor_ , I swear I will personally arrange for your deportation back to Jersey."

Danny bucked his hips up against Steve's experimentally, enjoying the groan it earned him. "Sir, yes sir."

\-------

Danny Williams was a professional. He was proud of his work, proud of his life, and he took both rather seriously. His mother had once told him that he'd been born a forty year old man, and even as he'd peered up at her from his car-seat, he'd been more than okay with that. 

But as he stood leaning against the Camaro, watching Steve return with their morning coffees, it was all he could do not to flop on the ground and roll around in hysterics. 

The untrained eye would completely fail to notice the moderately awkward hitch in Steve's stride. Danny, however, had spent an embarrassingly large number of minutes staring at his partner's backside; more than enough to know that their early morning sexual adventure was now taking its toll on Steve's six-foot frame. The night before, Steve had announced, half sleepy, half drunk, that he wanted Danny to take him. And fuck if Danny hadn't dropped his beer bottle on the kitchen floor.

"Not a word, you," Steve instructed, pressing a coffee cup to Danny's chest. One of his hands now free, he reached down to root around in Danny's pocket for the keys. 

If Danny happened to take the opportunity to draw Steve into a slightly sloppy kiss, he was sure nobody could blame him. They weren't really the type for PDAs, but hey, it was a sleepy Sunday morning. Just as he was trying to figure out how to both kiss Steve _and_ twist his arm back to place his coffee on the roof of the car, the hairs on the back of his neck stuck up. They were being watched. 

Cracking an eye open, he peered over Steve's shoulder to take in a group of teenagers, obviously heading out for a day at the beach. The teens were looking at them, a little shocked.

Being openly with a man... well, it had taken some adjusting to. There had been a few weeks, in the early stages, where Danny was ashamed to admit he had been slightly embarrassed. He'd hated it, hated feeling that way - hated how illogical it was, when he'd never been embarrassed by gay friends. 

He suspected that part of it was that he and Steve weren't really what other people were expecting, which only made them more awkward, which only made him more awkward, ad infinitum. 

People always seemed to be surprised that they were partners - seemed surprised that two people who were decidedly masculine, and decidedly dangerous, were also decidedly together. Danny suspected it was one of those aggravating social quirks that would never really make any sense. Not everybody was Carson Kressley, for crying out loud.

In the end, like everything else in his life, he'd just got the fuck over it, and being with Steve had become second nature.

He licked his lips in amusement when Steve twisted around to face their audience, his left eyebrow raised in challenge. The poor teens weren't to know that Steve's fearsome expression was entirely fake; he'd as soon hurt curious kids as he'd become an accountant. They quickly scuttled into the coffee shop.

Danny sighed. "I think you get too much enjoyment from doing that, babe."

He could almost hear the muscles in Steve's face groan with the effort of forming an innocent expression. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Danny."

Danny snorted. "Give me the keys, you animal. It's _my_ car."

"No way, man," Steve protested, moving speedily around to the driver's side as if trying to claim his space. "I'm driving!"

They stared menacingly at each other over the roof.

Some things never changed.


End file.
